Charles rummaged in the refrigerator, which was dead from the storm, looking for something to feed the children, disregarding the Tupperware tub of chili marked eat me. It was probably something old. Hadn’t they had chili a week ago? There were hot dogs, but he only saw hamburger buns. He knew Mary Byrd had told him what to have, but he’d forgotten. Oh well. He could put perishable stuff in a cooler outside. There were seven boxes of macaroni and cheese on the pantry shelf, so he knew they wouldn’t starve. Plenty of OJ and milk and cereal, plenty of cat food and dog food, of course. She’d never let the animals go without. Luckily there were some jugs of water; the water and toilets had quit just after the electricity. The phone had been last to go. At least they had the gas. It would be a boring Saturday night with no TV, no ESPN.
He wondered how Mary Byrd was doing. Riding in Mann’s semi seemed so batty, but it was true that she wouldn’t have gotten out of the Memphis airport if she’d tried to fly; everything was shut down. Worrying about her was pointless; she was going to do what she needed to do. This mess with her family was so awful, he felt a little bad that she was having to do it by herself. But even if he could have taken her, his being around her mother and brothers would only have made things weirder. There might be fighting, and yelling, and if he tried to intervene, somehow he’d get blamed for intervening. Mary Byrd could take care of herself, though, and she was tough, something he credited himself with helping her be.
He’d learned that if he let her lean on him in situations about which he could do nothing, she’d lean too much and not figure out how to deal with things herself. But he knew that she knew he was going to be there, no matter what craziness came down the road. He didn’t want to be her damned father, though.
Hearing activity in the kitchen, the cats came around and rubbed against his legs. Irene said, “Ow?”
“Oh yeah, now you guys love me, right?” The cats paid little attention to him unless Mary Byrd was gone. As he was trying to put some cat kibble into their bowls, Iggy bumped his big fat head against Charles’s hand, scattering kibble across the floor. “Iggy, you big dumbass,” he said. He didn’t pick the stuff up; whatever the cats didn’t eat the dogs would take care of.
The dogs. How could they be walked with all the ice and deadly branches crashing down? He saw William’s neon green Ninja Turtle bike helmet hanging on a peg by the kitchen door. He put on his overcoat and the helmet, took down the leashes, and whistled loudly. The Pounder and Puppy Sal trotted in hopefully, looking sideways at the munching cats and spilled kibble.
To the dogs he said, “Forget about it, you two. Y’all can clean up when we get back. I just fed you an hour ago, remember?”
Charles hooked them to their leashes and the three of them went out the door, stopping to take in the icy scene, their breaths three white clouds in the dark cold. It was part winter wonderland, part tornado aftermath, and the man and dogs, recognizing an unusual adventure, went forth in wary excitement.
“Okay, dudes, let’s have some fun!” Charles hoped that he wouldn’t slip and bust his ass. He wished William and Eliza were with him, it was all so amazing, but taking them out in the storm would probably be reckless endangerment or something. Mary Byrd would think so. He had a shitload of work to do, but the light table wouldn’t be working to view Wiggs’ photos, and anyway, he wanted to spend some time with the children. He wished he hadn’t let William sleep over with Other William; they’d better be playing board games like they said, and not be out in this shit. When he got back from walking the dogs, if he got back and wasn’t clobbered by a falling limb, he’d get Eliza to play some Scrabble if she was still awake. They hadn’t played in a long time, since the time Eliza had spelled “yoni” and he’d challenged her, only to be horrified when he looked up the word and saw the definition. That was the problem with kids today; they knew too much. Where, oh where, was the goddamn innocence anymore?
Ernest felt pumped up by yesterday’s call from Mary Byrd and the last of Pothus’s bottle of Maker’s, which the ladies thought they’d hidden. It was getting chillier and the day was turning bitter and threatening, even a little icy shit coming down How bad could it get? He’d seen unbelievable snow in the Dinara Planina south of Sarajevo—snow that fell in clumps for days, covering tanks, cows, houses. Snow in Mississippi was puny and accidental and didn’t last. Things never got covered over; you could always still see the ugly kudzu tangles underneath, like piles of chicken bones. But now the early night sky had turned that ominous steely gray he remembered in Bosnia—low and solid and not looking like there was going to be any breaking up to it.
A little weather sure as hell wouldn’t have bothered Kalashnikov, who’d lived in Siberia and then worked in some wasteland at the munitions plant, not giving a fuck about the cold and lack of attractive gash as long as he could jink with his guns. Ernest pictured him in his tiny, immaculate dacha, cheesecloth spread out on a table where dozens of oily steel pieces lay scattered like watch parts, or jewelry. Kalashnikov would work at the guns into the night with the wind and the wolves trying to out-howl each other outside his door in the vast taiga, or the steppes, or whatever. In the morning he would gather up a few parts, tying them up in an old babushka, and take them to the factory, where he’d fool with them some more. He would mess with them until he got it right, honing and tooling until the gun became a perfect little piece of clockwork, an artifact of impeccable craftsmanship and satisfying—thrilling—to hold and behold. This was just the way Ernest intended to write his novel, refining each little detail until the whole worked flawlessly. It would be the AK-47 of novels. He would get to work on it seriously again after the weekend. Anyway he’d better get his ass on the road.
Ernest gathered up the things he would need for the night. It was a birthday party at Janky Jill’s, black tie, but would they be lame enough to cancel it for a little weather? Surely not. The Lords of Chevron were lined up, and even though all they did was R&B and rockabilly covers, they must have cost somebody some money. It had to be happening. He was out of here. He had had no fun, zero, in weeks, unless you counted the night at the boats in Greenville, where he’d lost a wad and glimpsed his father.
Maybe Mary Byrd had already left for Virginia, and he wondered how. The Teever idea was just nuts. He was encouraged by her call; she wouldn’t have made it if she weren’t still interested, right? She could put that shit in Virginia off for a day or two. Crime always waited.
Ernest threw his tux and batwing of Tanqueray into his MG and stowed his overcoat, hunting boots, and gun in the trunk. He carefully tucked a folded-up Dixie Crystal sugar packet in the glove box. A little toot for the ride back. Backing down the long, rutted dirt drive he stopped to throw back a little white pill. “Godshpeed,” he said, chewing. He was off.
The roads were fine and there was no precipitation until he hit Highway 7. Ernest could feel but not see that there was a little ice. The MG was so low to the ground that he could sense the road slipping away beneath him, tire treads unengaged. At one point he fishtailed, sending him into a cheek-stinging adrenaline rush and a lower gear. The little car righted itself and Ernest patted the dashboard. “Good girl,” he said, and plugged in a Stones tape. The Stones; you could always count on them to supply intestinal fortitude and a surge of confidence. God bless Mick and Keith, although sometimes Ernest had a nagging fear that they had gone soft on him. He didn’t mind all the models—that was good—but all those kids, the health food and tennis and tans, the repaired teeth; what was going on with those guys? Ernest had missed out on the early days; Brian Jones, the incredible drugs and parties; he was just about being born when Marianne Faithfull had done the candy bar thing. He had read about it. Now that would have been a party.
The light, Ernest noticed, had gotten really strange, like tornado weather, but that was a good month off. The clouds in the lights of the highway seemed so low, like they were barely clearing the trees. Sleet was coming down in hard little lines, and few cars were on the road, almost none from the opposite direction. Here and there a car had run off into a ditch, or had pulled over. Still, it was just a little glaze—nothing so unusual. Southerners just did not know how to drive on ice. They would try to brake, and they would turn against a skid. Sorry bastards. He was glad his country-boy driving skills were so superior. He took another pull of Tanqueray.
By the time he reached Coffeeville, the dex had kicked in good, which made it hard to deal with the fact that he was creeping along, doing maybe forty, forty-five. What was this shit? The trees sparkled even in the low light, their branches drooping. The surface of the road had a high and alarming sheen to it now, as if it were coated with Vaseline. Ernest lit a cigarette and fast-forwarded to “Memo from Turner.”
Didn’t I see you down in San Antone on a hot and dusty night?
You were eatin’ eggs in Sammy’s when the black man there drew his knife
Inspired by Ry Cooder’s thrilling slide and Mick’s lip-curling snarl, he sucked on the Tanqueray again. Mother’s milk. He would probably arrive in time to shoot a few at Purvis’s Tables with his bud, Boudleaux. Maybe.
Ernest took the exit at a crawl. For the last half hour he hadn’t seen a soul on the road. The freezing rain was falling thickly and noisily now, and trees were burdened with ice, branches bending to the ground. Wires sagged. What the fuck?
He decided that first he would go to Boudleaux’s where he could change and leave the MG. Boudleaux would know whether or not the party was still on. From there he could walk to Jill’s. Clearly there would be no driving anywhere tonight. He could crash with Boudleaux in the unlikely event that he did not get lucky. Or he could get a room at the Ole South Motel, where all the doors had hearts painted on them, and room 14 had the Black Romeo circular bed with lights and mirrors. But that was a waste of cash if he didn’t score.
Upstairs, in Boudleaux’s little apartment overlooking the town square, Ernest hung the tux on a door and flopped down on a crusty plaid sofa. He brushed away some Sonic foot-long wrappers and a puckered nub of hot dog bounced out and rolled along the floor. He pulled on his gin.
His friend Bryant Boudleaux was a faux Cajun. While still in his tender adolescence he had left his unbearably white middle-class Rochester home to work on the rigs off the Louisiana Coast. Taking advantage of his Frenchy last name, he had managed to pass as a local and to pick up some useful skills. A great singer, he had learned to play a wicked squeeze box from some criminal and learned to cook from a three-hundred-pound woman who he only occasionally had to service in exchange for meat and groceries. She had been a wonder with seafood, from catching it to having her way with it in the kitchen. Boudleaux had felt like just another crustacean in her hands, soft and peeled and defenseless, waiting to be plunged alive into a boiling pot of pungent Zatarain’s.
The Tanqueray was about a third gone and, wanting to conserve his gin, he switched to the beer in the fridge. “Ah, PBR,” he said, gulping. “Piss, But Refreshing.” He shook his head.
Boudleaux came in with a sack. “Hey, man,” he said. “Why don’t you have a beer?” He began unloading batteries, candles, and more beer.
“All they had at Family Dollar were these red Liberace candles.” He carried two beers to the window and opened it. On the outside ledge was a narrow painter’s trough for spinning beers. A beer could be spun to icy perfection in ninety-six seconds.
“What in the fuck is happening out there?” Ernest asked. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, man.” Boudleaux said. “It’s the weirdest. I walked back through the cemetery and some kids were in there sledding, and all of a sudden, the trees were, like, exploding. The kids were freaked—they were screaming.”
There was a huge crash. Ernest jumped up to look out the window where Boudleaux was spinning. “Jesus God!” Boudleaux shouted. An enormous oak had split in half. In the streetlight, they saw a confused raccoon pop out of the tree trunk and scrabble away. All around them was the din of branches and trees shattering and crashing under the weight of the ice. The sound was like gunfire, shots amplified by the lowering sky.
“The power’s bound to go,” said Boudleaux. “I’d better cook.”
“I guess this means the bars will be closed,” Ernest said glumly.
“It don’t seem unreasonable that the bars might close for the end of the world,” said Boudleaux. He was busy taking paper packages from the freezer.
“It’s supposed to end in fire and brimstone, not in ice,” said Ernest, popping a new beer. “Ignorant heathen. You know—the two hundred thousand horsemen: “And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone.”
“Apocalypse is apocalypse is apocalypse,” said Boudleaux, busily starting a roux. “You get that from Star Wars?”
At that moment the lights went off and the old Frigidaire quit its friendly hum. Ernest and Boudleaux looked at each other in the gloom.
“I wonder how long this will last,” said Boudleaux. “If it’s doing this all over town, trees and shit falling on lines, then it’s not going to be coming on anytime soon.”
There was clumping on the stairs and in came Stovall Bott with more beer. Ernest was glad to see it was an upgrade, but not a big one: good old skunky Rolling Rock. They lit all the candles.
“Where’d you get these pussy-ass candles?” said Sto. “Reminds me of my sister back in high school, smoking dope in her room listening to the Carpenters.”
“Valentine’s Day,” said Boudleaux, stirring. “I hope we don’t have to fire up the tar baby.” The tar baby was a large brown voodoo candle in the shape of a man. You could light him upright from the wick on top of his head or lay him down and light his dick. Next to his Hohner Corona II, the tar baby was Boudleaux’s favorite thing.
“Sto, do you think this party will still be on?” said Ernest.
“Definitely, man. It will definitely be a party,” said Sto. “It may not be the same party, but it will be one. Who needs electricity?”
“We got to plug into something to be able to play, dumbass.” said Boudleaux. “Think about it: the Lords of Chevron unplugged? Acoustic ‘Higher and Higher’? Mr. Excitement would die all over again”
“Gentlemen,” said Ernest. “This plugging-in thing concerns me. Are there any women in town?”
“Who knows?” said Sto. “Let’s get the news and see where this situation is going.”
They tried to pick up the local stations on the jam box but there was nothing but static. Finally, they homed in on WLVS from Tupelo. “All the way over to the river—they’re having a major thing, a major ice storm,” said the deejay. “We’ve been told that the power is out over there and trees are falling on power lines—it’s an emergency situation. Folks over there, don’t go out of your houses unless absolutely necessary. We’ll be giving you more information on that ice storm as soon as we get it.”
“Cool,” said Stovall.
“Damn,” said Ernest. Byrd would be less likely to show with the power out. She better not be on her way to Virginia. If she went with Teever, he’d probably never see her again. Crazy bitch.
“I’m just gonna cook up all this shit,” said Boudleaux, bending over to light a smoke on the gas eye. “Or this freezer will get funky. We need gumbo to keep up our strength.”
“Put me some oysters in there,” said Ernest.
Boudleaux threw everything in the pot with the half-made roux. They sat down and began a game of bourré. For every pat hand, knock, and bourré in the game there was a line from Deliverance:
“Now let’s you jes drop’em pants.”
“You don’t know nuthin’.”
“Aintry? This river don’t go to Aintry.”
“Give the boy a dollar, Drew.”
“Get on back up thar in them woods.”
“Don’t say anythang—just do it.”
“L-l-l-louder.”
“Don’t you boys try nothin’ like that again.”
“I could play with that guy all day.”
“This corn’s special.”
“Panties, too.”
The men did Jäger shots in NASCAR jelly glasses. The cheap candles formed bloody puddles and the gumbo simmered forgotten on the stove, a stinking sludge. Boudleaux passed around some ludes, saying, “Lagniappe, boys!” Ernest grew bored with the card game even though he’d been winning. When Sto accused him of cheating Ernest said, “Fuck y’all, bastards. This game sucks anyway with three people,” and got up to dress for the party and refresh himself. The smell of the gumbo was unsettling. He was curious about outside, and restless, and wanted to find Byrd. Also he needed more smokes.
When he emerged in his tux, Sto said, “Nice monkey suit, dude. You gone need more than that tonight. Carhartt, Day-Glo vest, boots.” He lurched toward the bathroom.
“Clothes make the man,” Ernest said, scooping up his winnings. “If anyone comes looking for me, I’ll be at the par-tay.”
Boudleaux said, “Right behind you.”
“Hey!” Sto’s muffled voice came from the john. “Who did this in the tub?”
Down on the sidewalk the ice was treacherous. Ernest wasn’t sure he could negotiate it, but if he could get to his car he could get his boots on. He grabbed a branch, which helped steady him, but it was slow going. When he reached the MG, he opened the trunk and exchanged his Cole Haan loafers for the hunting boots, which smelled vaguely of dog effluvia. The AK lay there. He might need it. One never knew. What if those frat bastards picked a fight again? He needed to be warm, but he felt that the heavy Danish officer’s coat detracted from the formal appearance he wished to present. It had an important feature. Inside was sewn a sturdy holster large enough to accommodate the AK, thanks to its ingenious folding feature designed by Peggy at Peggy’s Sew Nice Alterations. Peggy, happy to have something to do other than reconstruct prom and beauty review dresses for Hatchatalla Academy girls with disproportionate boob jobs, had installed the holster in exchange for a deer tenderloin from deep in Antenna’s carport freezer. He slipped the pet weapon inside the coat and slowly shuffled on to the JFC.
There was light on at the JFC; they must have gotten a generator. People scurried in and out, some forgetting to slow down when they hit the ice, busting their butts. A group stood talking excitedly in front of the sign painted on the building that said do not stand here at any time for any reason. Maybe Teever was around, and had something interesting going on. There was a major buzz in the air; Ernest could hear bits of conversation: “Water’s off, too.” “Sap was up already from that warm spell at Christmas; they were top-heavy.” Inside was like a used car lot, or the fun house at the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair. A few orange bulbs were strung around, not quite lighting the place. Back in the dark aisles people skulked with flashlights. A face would loom out of the dimness, smiling crookedly with panic and excitement, causing him to wonder if he’d done any mind stuff. At the checkout, he saw that they’d been foraging for things that normal people needed in an emergency: batteries, charcoal, matches, diapers, paper plates and cups, coolers. Kids were carrying suitcases of beer. A big damn picnic.
Outside again, he realized that even with his boots on he didn’t have enough traction. By the JFC Dumpster lay some pieces of chicken wire. He mashed a piece around each foot and stomped around. It was good. He needed to be getting some ass tonight, not busting it.
It was seriously cold. It’s so cold, there ain’t six inches of peter on Main Street, as Pothus always said. But he was comfortable. The Jägermeister antifreeze effect. The glaze of ice on everything was like the ice palace scene in Antenna’s favorite old movie, Dr. Zhivago. Against that romantic image or any others, Ernest swallowed another dexie. Ludes were nice but his was in the tub, and they had a way of taking the edge off. He liked an edge. He patted his left pocket for the Tanqueray, finishing it off and dropping the bottle. He would have to start over.
Plodding on, Ernest climbed over a few busted trees and dodged a falling limb, which came down slowly and surreally and shattered like glass. The broken trees were silhouetted, their fractured stumps raw and jagged against the icy glitter and the strange sky. It reminded Ernest of those peopleless German landscapes he had seen in the museum in Prague. “This is what the war will look like,” his refugee Croatian girlfriend had whispered. “Except that there will be people scurrying like rats, and the bodies of children.” He got a rush at the memory— his lovely woman with her pale, celadon skin. When she stood in front of the old brass lamp in his shabby room he could see through her amazing breasts.
He might be able to get Byrd to at least slip out for a cocktail, but how could he get in touch with her? Women were out there: frightened, cold, in a tizzy about the storm and needing the special kind of rescue that only Ernest could offer. It had been, what? Since New Year’s eve. Last year! Totally unacceptable. If he couldn’t find Byrd, he had half a mind to go up to Virginia and take care of that shit for her.
He decided to check out Dead Jerry’s and refuel. Normally, Dead Jerry’s was noisy with college kids shouting at each other above their loud retread music. The bar had actually hosted some epic live performances—Mose Allison, Junior Brown, David Lindley—but the frat boys just forked over the stiff covers to spin their lips the whole show complaining about the bands that just did not know how to jam, man. Ernest peered through the window. The AK banged against the glass. A candle glowed at a table far back in the cavelike room and he could make out the bartenders playing cards. They looked like the seven dwarfs: long hair, beards, toboggans. No sign of any patrons, let alone Mary Byrd or Teever. He went in anyway.
“This is quite the Disney moment,” he said. “Where’s Snow White?”
The bartenders turned, their glazed eyes half-concealed by drooping lids. “Hey now,” said one. “Oh, wow. A giant penguin,” said another. “What’s with your fucking feet, man?”
“It’s the latest,” said Ernest. “Y’all might think of getting some. Chicken wire goes pretty well with hippie couture. So can I get a drink or what?”
A dwarf whose red lips, moustache, and sparse soul patch made his face look like ladies’ private parts said, “Help yourself. Here’s the flashlight. We’ll take those bitchin’ tails in exchange for what you drink.” It was well known that when Ernest returned from Bosnia he’d gone on a bender and to pay his immense bar tab, he’d auctioned his costly Harris Tweed jacket. Some dick had bought it for forty dollars then traded it to Teever. “It don’t matter, bastards,” he’d said. “War is hell on a blazer.”
Ernest scanned the rows of bottles looking for the Kahlúa and vodka. A few White Russians were the way to go. Some nourishment, and the syrupy liquor would give him a little sugar buzz. Good: milk in the cooler with a yellow wedge of hoop cheese and a bowl of peeled eggs. He popped one of the eggs into his mouth and, not seeing a knife, bit off a few hits of cheese. Something else floating in the ice water caught his eye: a Baggie. Hoping for contraband he pulled it up and held it to the flashlight. A snout, claws, and dull little eyes looked back at him.
“Goddamn, y’all. What is this shit?” Ernest said.
“It bit Randy this morning,” said a dwarf. “On his thigh—very close to his stuff. We need to take it to the health department to see if it has rabies.”
“Jesus.” Ernest spat out the cheese and threw the Baggie back. To sterilize his mouth, he quickly slugged back some vodka, gargling far back in his throat. He built his White Russian and played with the flashlight. On the wall was the usual college bar décor—a Porky Pig cookie jar Ernest knew to be full of multicolored condoms, football gewgaws, cute happies the sorority girls had given the bartenders, a Shriner’s hat. What the fuck was Al Chymia? In Bosnia the bars were austere and strictly business. In a real bar nothing should distract you from your drink or your thoughts. Unless it was a woman. At a musty bar in Bratislava there had been an incredible medieval barmaid. For an extra five bucks she would lift one long breast from her dress and, giving a tug not unlike the pumping action on a gun, aim a thin stream of bluish milk into your slivovice, turning it a cloudy lavender. Plums and cream. For another five bucks she’d dip the breast in the drink and allow you to suck it off.
Ernest smoked a couple and polished off another drink. Awash in the milky sweetness of memory and White Russians, he grabbed a napkin and a pen off the bar and jotted down a quick Byronic ode, Ode on a Gone Byrd. He’d put it in the literary magazine. He loved Byron; a husband in the background never worried him, not even when the husband was his brother-in-law.
He felt fortified, but instead of the sugar rush he’d expected, he felt a sinking spell coming on. Rummaging around in his breast pocket, he found some blue pills. He couldn’t remember what they were, but it didn’t matter; they would alter the mood one way or another. Ernest shook them in his hand like dice, popping them in his mouth. He chewed them—time suddenly seemed of the essence—and washed them down with a swig of vodka. Deftly swiping the Kahlúa bottle, he tucked it into his cummerbund, hoping he wouldn’t fall and disembowel himself, or worse. He moved to the door. Party time. Backing out, Ernest drew the AK from his coat, snapping it in line. He fired at the Shriner’s hat and hustled quickly into the dark. The dwarfs screamed like girls.
Back on the dark street he worried that the bartenders might flag down some popo, but Hap West ought to have his hands full tonight with better things to do than harass decent partygoers who, after all, had the right to bear arms, especially on an unpredictable night like this. At the very least they’d confiscate the AK. At the worst—Christ, a night in the county jail. With no electricity. He needed to stay off the streets—but how? If anyone saw him creeping through a yard they’d think he was a burglar. A looter. He’d just have to keep low, stay on the trail, but not in the middle, off to the side, dodging into the brush at the approach of enemy vehicles. Okay. It could be done. He’d done it before.
The sky was weirder still—that bizarre orangeish glow from an unknown source. Transformers were blowing close by and in the distance and exploding like rockets. The fall of branches had slowed so that the crashes were more separate and distinct and more nerve-wracking. Even more like a war zone. Kalesija.
Ernest slunk along, tensely cradling his gun and thinking about Bosnia. He remembered a night like this. He had been trying to reach his room after drinking with Danish soldiers in the village café. Fighting had been going on intermittently all day a few streets away, near the river. But suddenly, it was in his street, all around him, and the few people who were out ran for cover. He had continued on stealthily through the village, ducking into doorways at every burst of gunfire. A young Serb with a shaved head, wearing only a sweatshirt, had toppled out of a darkened stoop, slumping to the street. Looking in the direction the shots had come from, Ernest had recognized one of the soldiers from the café, who’d been covering his ass. The soldier had looked Ernest in the eye but had given no sign of recognition and had moved off into the night. Ernest had crossed the street to the wounded man. A crummy knockoff Kalashnikov lay next to him. His stomach gaped through the shirt below Willy DeVille’s face and the guy’s heart pumped out his life across the icy, glittering cobbles.
Ernest shook off the gruesome memory. Just ahead were the silhouettes of several people standing around, looking like a group of meerkats. Damn. Too many sizes and shapes for it to be the police; a family? Each held something: Guns? Baseball bats? They turned to him, shining clublike flashlights. They moved up and with relief he recognized a familiar group of retarded guys from the local halfway house. What were they doing loose on a night like this? He recognized most of them, each of whom had a distinct public persona. There was a municipal worker guy, a suburban leisure guy in a powder-blue jumpsuit, a large set of cowboy twins, and a small, pin-headed black guy. Two more men he didn’t know; they had no act and might have been caretakers; sometimes it was hard to tell. Encountered individually the men were meek and amusing, but in a pack like this? Less like meerkats than surly bears startled out of hibernation by the storm. He readied his hand on the right places of the AK, but tried to hide it behind him. “Evening, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly. They moved in closer—too close. One said, working his hands, “Theter gun?” He had to move or shoot. He turned on the ice, heading back to another street. They let him go, calling out, “I like to have that suit!” and “Don’t go, mister! We fixin’ to make us a ice fort!”
He needed to get to that party. South Eleventh Street was iced but smooth—the city must have cleared it—and he pried the chicken wire from his feet. Without the booties but with the energy of the mystery pills and the grace of the White Russians, he found he was able to glide down the street. Only a few branches were in his way, and Ernest elegantly leapt over them. He gathered speed and confidence, an Olympic distance skater with the AK held behind his bent back, his right arm swinging in time to his strong, measured glides. He relaxed and held the gun before him and across his ribs, like a fur muff. The wooden stock of the AK was oddly warm in his hands and icy air and adrenaline burned his cheeks. The sky had finally cleared and stars twinkled gorgeously against it. Byrd, where the hell you at, girl? He didn’t want to rescue someone else. If he couldn’t find her tonight, if she’d gone up north, he was hatching another plan. She needed his help.
“It’s darker than Egypt,” he said to himself. All the broken pine and cedar made the air smell like Christmas. Lovely! He sailed down the long street. Hans Brinker on the canal, on his way to put a finger in, well, he hoped not a dyke.
He turned a corner onto the side street where the party was supposed to be. He saw the party house, softly lit, the last bungalow on a dead end. It looked like home, and he couldn’t wait to get out of the cold and confrontation. He could see a few people outside but they looked very small. Damn, he thought, this had better not be a platoon of mini-tards or something. It was three kids—little dudes frozen in place, arms held out stiffly from their sides by overbundling. They stared at the gun. Happy that he wasn’t going to be fucked with, he said, “What are you kids doing out here?” Maybe they were actually frozen. “I’m a nice guy. I’m not going to mess with you.” Ernest opened his long overcoat and stashed the gun in its droopy holster. He pulled out the Kahlúa, guzzled the last of it, and threw the bottle in the bushes where it shattered glassily.
“What’s the matter? Tongues all froze up?” He grinned, a substance-driven rictus of teeth and gum, and wagged his own tongue to amuse them.
Their eyes widened, and one little boy spoke up. “We . . . we’re going home. We were just looking for good places to sled tomorrow. There’s a good hill behind that house.” The boy gestured with one inflated Michelin Man arm at the party house.
“Huh,” Ernest said. “Well, maybe you guys want to come inside and get warm? There’s a party in there. There’s beer.” He laughed, a high-lonesome sort of whinny.
“Um,” the boy said. “We’ve got to go home now.”
“Well, okay then. If you’re sure.”
“Okay,” said the little boy. He swatted one of the other boys, and they began back-stepping off the sidewalk, into the brush, turning and breaking into a run, scrabbling through branches and tinkling ice.
Ernest tried to think of a cool sendoff that the boys would appreciate, coming up with “My dear penguins, we stand on a great threshold! It’s okay to be scared, many of you won’t be coming back. Thanks to Batman, the time has come to punish all God’s children!”
The boys were quickly out of sight, although he heard one screech, “Williams, wait up! Don’t ditch me!”
He didn’t really get kids. They always seemed so unsociable.